Savage Love

Cock & Bull

What's your take on circumcision? My sister is about to have her first baby -- a boy -- and is leaning toward cutting. I think it's genital mutilation, and I have yet to hear a medical argument that makes any sense. If someone wants to be circumcised, I say let him decide for himself when he's old enough. What do you think?

Concerned Uncle

Last week I promised to discuss a little cock in this week's column, and so we shall -- a very little cock. My boyfriend Terry and I recently adopted a baby boy, and like your sister we were faced with deciding to cut or not to cut. Both my boyfriend and I are cut, and as I've written pro-circumcision columns in the past, my readers might reasonably expect that the end of my son's cock was lopped off shortly after birth. But my pro-cutting stance was never grounded in any sound medical or dental arguments. No, my support for the routine circumcision of newborn males is entirely selfish and thoroughly predictable: Cut cock tastes better. Ask all the cocksuckers you know, male and female, and nine out of ten will tell you they prefer cut over uncut cock. And hey, nine out of ten cocksuckers couldn't be wrong!

Or could they?

We did an open adoption, which means we met our son's bio-mom shortly before he was born, and she told us the baby was going to be a boy. We didn't really discuss circumcision before the baby came, both assuming we'd naturally get our son circumcised. But at the hospital, holding our newborn son, I found myself feeling unexpectedly ambivalent about circumcision. Even before he was officially ours, before any of the papers had been signed, the urge to protect my son and keep him from harm was overwhelming. However much his future sex partners might thank me for having him cut, the thought of a doctor taking a scalpel to his little dick and hacking the end off, well, that seemed to me like harm.

Again, my support for the routine circumcision of newborn males has always been tied to my habit of putting adult males' penises in my mouth. At the hospital, changing our son's first diaper, I realized I was looking at one of only a handful of penises that I can say with any certainty won't ever find their way into my mouth (the other four belonging to my two brothers, my father, and my stepfather). If there was ever a penis that -- for all it should matter to me -- could keep its stanky ol' foreskin, this was it. We should leave our son intact, I told my boyfriend, teach him how to wash this thing we don't have, and let him make up his own mind about his foreskin when he's old enough to get tattoos and facial piercings.

But my boyfriend was strongly in favor of having our son cut. "I want my son to look like me," he said, "and I'm circumcised." I pointed out that no one's ever taken one look at my cock and told me how much I look like my father -- and thank God for that; can you imagine anything more traumatic? -- so I didn't think that argument held much water. Terry predicted that, if we didn't have our son cut, he might not get sucked off as much as he'd like as an adult. "If he can't get a blowjob from anyone when he's older," Terry threatened, "I'm going to tell him it's all your fault!" Unable to come to an agreement at the hospital, we brought our son home intact, but continued to argue about what to do. Terry took the pro-cut side, even going so far as to make an appointment with a dick doc, while I did my best arguing an unfamiliar con-circumcision position.

So who prevailed? What did we ultimately do? Does our son have a foreskin? To find out the answer to these and other fascinating questions, get your ass to a bookstore or go online and buy a copy of my new book, The Kid: What Happened after My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant -- An Adoption Story (Dutton). Not only will you learn what ultimately happened to my son's foreskin, you'll also find out how someone in my line of work -- smutty sex advice -- convinced several social workers, an adoption agency, and a judge to give me a kid. And not just any kid, but the cutest goddam kid on the whole goddam planet.

Forget which is bigger, straight cock or gay cock--I want to know what the hell "all five measures from the Kinsey protocol" are. I thought there were only two measures of penis size: girth and length. What are the other three?

Confused in Colorado

Now that I've had a chance to read the gay cock vs. straight cock study myself (thanks to Willus Johnson at the University of Chicago), I would like to assure both my readers and my doubting, straight editors that, yes, the study is for real -- real scientists (Bogaert & Hershberger), real journal (Archives of Sexual Behavior, vol. 28, no. 3), and real data (5,122 men interviewed at the Kinsey Institute between 1938 and 1963). The five measures on the Kinsey protocol are (1) estimated erect penis length, (2) measured flaccid penis length, (3) measured erect penis length, (4) measured flaccid penis circumference, and (5) measured erect penis circumference.

The Kinsey dick data showed that gay men's penises, on average, were around a half an inch bigger (6.46 inches erect for gay men, 6.14 erect for straight men). Bogaert & Hershberger discuss several reasons this might be, including prenatal hormone levels, biological mechanisms regulating genital growth, and vain gay men reporting that their dicks are way bigger than they actually are ("homosexual men may be more likely than heterosexual men to exaggerate the size of their penises"). Bogaert & Hershberger dismiss the gay-men-are-fibbing explanation, observing that straight men are just as likely to fib ("gay men may be more concerned than straight men with some elements of the body, [but] heterosexual men are in fact concerned -- even preoccupied -- about the size of their penises and often desire a larger one").

However, the study's fatal flaw, if I may, is its reliance on self-reported data. The straight and gay men in the study were asked to measure themselves and report back to creepy Dr. Kinsey, so odds are good that many men, straight and gay, lied, telling researchers what they, the subjects of the study, wanted to believe -- i.e. that their cocks were huge. I would knock an inch off both averages just to be on the safe side, bringing the average -- average, mind you -- gay cock down to 5.46 inches, and the average straight cock down to 5.14 inches; numbers which jibe with my own observations in the field.

I read your bit about gay cock being bigger than straight cock. I may have a smaller cock than some faggot, but I'd rather have a penis the size of a dandelion than stick my cock in some guy's nasty, stanky ass.

Faggots Are Disgusting

Rest assured that no one will ever force you to put your wee straight cock in some guy's nasty, stanky ass. It's a free country, FAD, and that means you don't have to fuck any nasty, stanky asses you don't care to.

Dan Savage's new book, The Kid... An Adoption Story is available now in better bookstores everywhere.